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it all at once—the boys and the raft and the continuity of their motion—would I know then what I saw? So far I’d caught them in separate images, atop the raft…next to the raft…under the raft…and, in my last version, Jake shoving Mason over the side and leaping off in one shining arc. I stopped—
    Why haven’t I seen the girl before? With each collage, a girl, all red, had come closer to the boys on the raft…her hand in Raft/1 ; her lower arm in /3 ; her elbow and shoulder in /4 ; her profile in /6. I skimmed the red profile with my fingertips, closed my eyes because touch without sight is more sensitive to texture.
    Curious to find the next image that would move the girl closer yet to the raft, I stirred white glue into a jar of water, brushed it across a piece of heavy watercolor paper. Overlaid the buckled surface with torn bits of mulberry paper and green rice paper…Different depths of water, yes. For the raft, I chose twine and—
    Opal cried. Quickly, I washed the glue from my hands. Picked her up and changed her, fed her, and sang to her, all along thinking about how I’d weave the twine from the center outward, raising it above the water. After I took Opal for a walk, I tucked her in for her nap.
    Then I spread the twine into a maze, a rectangular shape, pressed it down and brushed on lots of glue mix. To make it stick, I covered it with wax paper and ran my rubber roller across it. But I didn’t like how the raft just sat there, too symmetrical…like some hooked rug. The background was much stronger, a multitude of fragments that suggested more than what they were…especially the horizon, a torn edge with something brown beneath, perhaps a mountain ridge in the distance. It introduced a different scale. Intriguing…I hadn’t thought of mountains while I was working. Now I wanted to see some resolution to the raft, the same complexity as the background.
    Opal cried. I rushed to get her, bathed her, fed her, rinsed my brushes, laid them to dry on a paper towel, read to Opal, propped her on my hip while I cooked dinner.
    When Mason came home, he sniffed the air. “You’re working.” He sounded delighted.
    â€œSo it’s not my cooking?” I teased him.
    â€œYou want to keep going?”
    I nodded.
    He held out his arms for Opal. “Don’t we just love the smell of Annie making collages?”
    I opened it more, the image, went in with my hands, mushing it up—And was snagged by a sudden panic. No boys yet. The surface of the lake was smooth— both of them under —smooth for too long. It was a panic that knew more than I did, knew already and forever, and the wisdom of that panic, almost knowing, almost—
    Tearing at the too-smooth water, I remembered something Diane Arbus once said—a photo is a secret about a secret—and I kept tearing new strips of paper till one head broke through. A trick of light? One head only. Yellow, all yellow the head, rising from the too-smooth water—
    It’s a trick of— Suddenly, then, the other head…both visible now…yes, shoulders and arms…Finally, the urgency again. The flame and eagerness. It rarely happened like this—shapes flinging themselves at the background and adhering as though they’d been meant to converge—but when it did, I knew it was a gift and stayed with it. With the bliss of it.

    W HENEVER O PAL napped, I worked, building up the rest of the image to balance the raft. Layers upon layers on the boys and the girl, using the colors of their hair for their bodies: Jake all yellow, Mason all brown, and red for what I saw of the girl. Bits and scraps and twine…crumpled strips of rice paper in different colors…more glue mix on top of the layers.
    â€œWhy the raft again?” Mason wanted to know.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œI like the Thousand Loops. Why not another one